


The Taker

by DredPirateBones



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ghost McCree, I don't live in a desert, Jesse McCree & Fareeha "Pharah" Amari - Freeform, Other, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, b/c hes a ghost, that fic where McCree has like one line, they be sibs, unreliable descriptions of deserts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:10:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9996002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DredPirateBones/pseuds/DredPirateBones
Summary: He was The Taker just as he had once been Jesse McCree.He was the type of spirit that the living feared to become; dwelling in a season without flux, in a time without flow.Hey ya, hey ya.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by XDax the Magic DragonX and their McCree, found here
> 
> http://randomdraggon.tumblr.com/tagged/reaper%21mccree
> 
>  
> 
> and if you didn't read the tags: I live in the mountains where is snows a lot during the middle of winter b/c its too damn cold to snow at the beginning. I don't really know how to describe a desert. Sorry.

The white of the skull was too pure; sun bleached to uniform perfection. The shadows in the eye sockets were deeper then they should’ve been, more oppressive, something that felt wrong to look at.

 _Take care when staring into the abyss because the abyss stares back_.

And it does, he could see it; through a split perspective. A half buried skeleton with a prosthetic for a left forearm—himself, standing over the skeleton with the sun at his back. He didn’t remember his name but he did remember what it was like to suffer as he wondered, lost, in the desert.

The heat had been unbearable as it beat against his back, a separate weight to bear on its own. The headaches brought on by dehydration had felt like hell until his stomach twisted and clenched as he slowly starved. It had blocked out the headaches for a time. He could remember the exhausted dull concern when he realized that his body didn’t have enough water to sweat or spit—to cry. That his tongue had felt heavy and too big for his mouth and that his lips were chapped; cracked, bleeding.

When he finally collapsed, he didn’t pray to God or anyone else for help to end his suffering with either life or death. Yet the desert took him and made him one of its creatures. He was part of the sand now; a wraith—a reaper, ghost, demon—draped in red. A serape, the same one he had in life had followed him beyond his death; it was one of the two things he had woken up with. The rest of it, the brown shirt, the chest armor, durable pants, chaps, knee guard, boots, belt and belt buckle, gun and bullets, had been taken from his own corpse. Along with his new life, the desert had given him a mask that strongly resembled the skull of a western bull with the exception of the horns, which curled backward instead of forward.

The hat had been left behind but the band with the brass shells and the golden decal had been eagerly taken and added to the mask. He took great pains to guarantee that the ornaments sat across his forehead exactly as they had done on the hat. The human skull detail from the prosthetic had been taken as well and forcefully embedded into the exposed bones on his forearm. He hadn’t come back ‘whole’ as several religions would have people believe. The forearm and hand on his left were _his,_ no longer a clever piece of engineering, and yet they were nothing but bone; no veins, no ligaments nor muscle, not even skin. It was the same as the prosthetic: numb, dead to all feeling. He wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or not.

Along both arms were spiraling bands of ghost blue light that was echoed in the horns on his mask and, in his peripheral, his hair. Why? How? He didn’t know. Another facet of being dead, he supposed. They glowed softly much like the bioluminescent sea creatures he’d seen on a holoscreen; a bright light that was easy on the eyes.

There was a storm building on the horizon, moving in, made of sand and dust; flashes of dry lightning illuminated the enormous wall for split seconds at a time. He turned to regard it, the braid in his hair, rope thick and kissing his belt buckle, swayed with the movement. Above the storm, the sky had gone dark with cloud cover; they touched the top of the sand wall as if saying: _we’re with you._ It was a terrifying kind of beauty, the kind that made people stop and stare and try to fathom the enormity of it.

It meant something entirely different to him. He turned back to look at the skeleton. It was time for it to be buried once again. The storm would wash away the dead, finish off the dying, and wipe the land clean; reshape the sand dunes and let the survivors start anew. There would be no running from it. He pulled the cowl on his serape up over his head, turned away and left his skeleton lie where he had fallen.

 

* * *

 

 

He often spent the passage of days in a strange haze. When there was nothing to attract his attention, he walked, meandered—wandered the desert in an unusual state of hibernation. He didn’t sleep, so instead he existed in a series of instances where he thought little of the things of the living and dwelt on the wonders of nothing. That was when the voice was the loudest.

It comes and goes. He couldn’t put a face to it but he didn’t need to.  It was the voice of the desert. It sang to him with a soft whispering croon, “ _Wolf Mother, where have you been? You look so warn and so thin. You’re a taker; a death maker, let me here you sing hey ya hey ya.”_  

Sometimes, he’ll answer through a dry throat and cracked lips, “Hey ya hey ya.”

It could last for hours or days or years, or for the time it took for a butterfly to flap its wings, or the time it took for a flower to bloom. But the quiet would inevitably end with the feeling of a boot being dug into the small of his back. He could sense them, the

_guilt, guilty soul, killed killing blood murder_

Thankfully it didn’t hurt this time, just a steady pressure, a reminder that a guilty soul had wandered into his domain. He lifted his head, driven to

_take, to break, revenge vengeance retribution justice._

His body turned into thousands of grains of sand and hundreds of dust particles with a soft sigh. He was moving, skirting along the desert, before his body could completely dissipate and found his quarry in a deep ditch made from the rock of a river that used to flow through the land before it dried up and sank beneath the sand. They were sitting propped up against the side of the natural made ditch, unconcerned with the sharp rocks that must be embedded in their back with their chin nearly touching their chest.

He made a point of dragging his spurs against the ground as he walked to create a soft clicking sound; a rattle snake warning—his own death rattle. He jumped down into the ditch; dust kicking up from his landing, and stalked forward until he knew that the toes of his boots could be seen from under the wide brimmed hat the guilty wore. Slowly, fighting with the last of their strength, they dragged their head up to look at him.

Filthy blonde hair, blue eyes dulled over from suffering in silence, the beginnings of starvation ravaging a face that would have been delicate and pretty: a woman.

He could see into her soul, see what she did and who she used to be

 _a school house filled with her students_ ,

_a town of women who were_

_jealous of her looks and men that wanted her_

_for the same reason,_

_a single robot_ —

Omnic, a distant part of him corrected—

_with a gentle demeanor and a soothing voice that would often say, “I can fix that.”_

_Her soul was in tatters and cried out for him._

Her voice screamed in his head, full of anguish and choked with tears as a gunshot ricochets in his skull—

_“Sam!”_

_More gunshots follow_

Each ringing louder than the last and he was forced to cock his head to escape the hellish bell echo.

_This time they belong to her as she hunted down_

_those who ended her Sam’s life for nothing more than the age old ‘if I can’t have her, then no one can’._

_She kissed the cheek of each man she killed; left a smear of red lipstick mockingly as their corpses grew_

_cold._

He crouched as far down as his spurs would allow; weight on his toes. She watched him, too exhausted to be afraid, with heavy eyes that focused and unfocused each time she blinked. He didn’t need to look for it in her soul when he could see it on her gaunt face but he heard it anyway—

_“I’ve been wishin’ I was dead for a long time.”_

She was closer then she realized already.

Hers was a tortured soul: guilty, a killer, but not a murderer; stuck somewhere between the half-life of wanting to stay alive if only for vengeance but needing to be reunited with her Omnic. She couldn’t have both but he refused take her soul as he did so many before her because she was like him: a taker, a death maker, a spirit that wanted justice but would settle for revenge. She was innocent of the crime but guilty of the act.

 He held both hands out to her; the dusty red serape slid from his skeletal arm and pooled in the crook of his elbow. Life or death; he knew which one she’d pick but he liked to think that he was still kind enough to offer both. She reached for his left without so much as glancing at his right. His sun bleached fingers curled around her hand and held it as gently as he knew how.

What did it feel like to hold a skeleton’s hand instead of one made out of flesh?

Peacekeeper slid from her holster with a muted sound of metal against worn leather. Ironic, he thought as he pressed the barrel to the woman’s neck, under the jaw and angled at the back of her head, that the hand he offered her life with was now the one that would take it from her. She closed her eyes and smiled, breathed out slowly and mouthed her Omnic’s name. Peacekeeper’s harsh crack echoed across the desert.

Her body slumped against the river rocks. Only after the bullet holes stopped bleeding did he let go of her hand. He laid her down as gently as he could and placed her hands over her chest. He took his mask off in lieu of a hat and placed it down by his knee. Still in his hand, Peacekeeper caught his reflection: a face of ashen skin, dirty with sand dust, dark sleepless circles under pale blue eyes, jaw bone and molars visible through torn flesh and ligaments. Reaching out, he carefully closed the woman’s eyes.

The blue spirit lines along his person glowed softly and the sand answered; shifting and shuttered until the body was exactly six feet below his feet. The Taker put his mask back on and stood.

 

* * *

 

 

There were several cities in his desert. They sprouted from the sand and thrived and expanded in the heat as people flocked to them. He could feel them digging their boots into the small of his back as he stood on the wall in the corner of the dark room; body parallel to the floor. There were several people gathered in the room and all of them wore black uniforms. There was tactical gear lying about the room, gleaming clean and organized based on who it belonged to. The guns lay about on the various pieces of furniture; assault rifles on the coffee table and kitchen counters, a pistol laid forgotten under the couch from when it got kicked there by accident.

The Taker felt genuine anger at the poor treatment of the weapon. His thumb rubbed against Peacekeeper’s hammer to soothe himself. The heat he radiated made the room stifling and he watched as buttons were popped open, pant legs were rolled up, and cold water was passed around. With the AC broken, the windows got thrown open.

The Taker didn’t bother listening to them as they talked about supply shipments for a base further in the desert. Instead, he watched. There was five of them; all fairly nondescript and tailored to look alike with their short hair and same heights and builds. The Taker wondered if they knew that was by design, that it made them faceless, nameless—pawns; easily replaced and not worth mourning.

He doubted it.

When their professional business concluded, their talk turned from numbers and expected resistance to tall tales and traded stories about past firefights, they bragged about old scars and lives they’ve taken. When day turned to night, the water was replaced by bottles of beer. Every now and then, one would excuse himself and leave to use the bathroom with the sound of boisterous laughter from his companions following after him.

One of them made the mistake of glancing around the room, his eyes slid across the corner where The Taker stood and in that moment he could see the first person he killed.

  _A ten year old girl with brown hair,_

_the smell of dead flesh_

_blood splashed against the walls, the red liquid circling the body and_

_drip_

_drip_

_dripping_

_down the girl’s mutilated corpse_

_arms thrown in separate directions across the room, broken fingers_

_legs that bear dark purpling hand prints._

_One_

_lifeless eye stares up._

_The other is_

_swollen_

_shut._

The spirit line on his dead arm flared, small licks of blue flame appeared and disappeared like sparks, as his fingers elongated and turned into claws. They curled into a tight fist as his trigger finger twitched but he held

_Take him break him crush them taketaketake_

 the urges back and waited.

He would wait; let the pain in his back grow like a massive wave, would wait for that wave to crest, wait for the right time to unleash his rage. The Taker used the pain to fuel his fire and it burned bright.

Three more boots suddenly dug into the small of his back and broke him from the haze he was falling into. The Taker turned his head in their direction and smiled; the skin on his face cracked and fell to the ground as grains of sand. He left the Men in Black behind and started his hunt anew. A bullet from Peacekeeper was too gentle for the things they’ve done and he found it amusing that they didn’t yet know that they were about to die.

 

* * *

 

 

They weren’t hard to find but he waited for the heat of the next day before he decided to go after them. He stood on a sand dune and looked out into the desert. Among the silvery mirage lines, walked four people, from here they appeared to be walking on water; three guilty souls and an innocent.

Three guilty souls and one innocent walk into a desert. Truly, they could be the start of a bad joke, which must have made him the punch line. They walked in silence with their heads down and this march, he knew. It was the march of the listless. When the heat had become a burden, when talking became a chore, when thinking of colder things became their only solace; they marched forward without seeing and without caring. Their only thought was to follow the leader.

He followed them as a cloud of sand and dust, easily catching up and keeping pace, although he remained at a distance. The leader was a woman in blue armor with a helmet that resembled a bird, it glinted in the sun and hurt to look at. She was one of the guilty and was followed by three men. The innocent was shorter than his companions with thick dreadlocks and dressed in green.

The other two felt wrong. There was something else about them, something _more_. The cyborg’s body seemed stretched but still comfortable while the archer’s was straining at the seams— almost too much. They were the only two that grew alert when The Taker drew closer for a better look. He was close enough to see the kanji on the cyborg’s body and the detail on the archer’s tattoo before he could see them: a green dragon and two blue ones.

The dragons’ heads were the same size as a human’s with long serpentine bodies that wrapped around their hosts’ upper torso and shoulders.

They were celestial beings; spirits that were not alive nor had they ever died. They were born spirits and allowed themselves to be called into the living world. Their scales shimmered when they moved despite being opaque and small pieces of their bodies arched away in small explosions before being drawn back in. Solar flares. They were creatures that he would never understand and he didn’t bother trying. They lifted their heads and swiveled around. The dragons knew he was there but not where he was, nor did they know if he was a threat or not and that, above all else, made them nervous.

For hours, The Taker had fun playing with them; backing off until they couldn’t sense him anymore and drawing in so close he could see the brightness of their eyes and count their fangs. It made the cyborg and archer twitchy, fingers tightening on their weapons and weight shifting in case of an attack, yet none came. The Taker wound them up like a spring, full of tension that had no form of release.

He coiled the tension tight and tighter and tighter until the archer

           sna

pped.

He turned and loosed an arrow into the sand, causing the other three to flinch into their own action; weapons coming up and backs pressed against backs. The cyborg half drew his sword and turned in the direction of his brother’s wild shot.  There were several moments of tense silence as they scanned the surrounding area for a threat but found nothing—not even the loosed arrow.

The Taker had already left.

 

* * *

 

 

For the next several days, he drifted from one to the other—first the Men in Black in their crowded two story house, then to the four souls wandering his desert. He delighted in pushing at the edges of their awareness; making them jumpy and restless. At night, he would drag his spurs across the ground and tap a jaunty tune against a rifle muzzle with his claws; creating a high pitched sound that was harsh on the ears. They would wake in the middle of the night to the sound of snakes hissing and to coyotes yipping and howling, to sweltering heat and sweat-stung eyes. They argued amongst themselves and then dismissed the sounds, the way people did when they were seeking an explanation for things that could not be explained.

The lack of sleep made them ill-tempered and they lashed out at each other with increasing frequency.

The dragons were easier to antagonize. The Taker only needed to get close enough for them to sense him and their heads would rise up and swivel as they searched for him. It was during one such time that he realized something: the blue dragons could growl and hiss and roar but the green one couldn’t. Past injuries to its host had rendered it voiceless. 

Realization two came soon after, when he had been bold enough to grab the cyborg’s ankle in a punishingly tight grip. The green dragon had seen him as soon as he had touched its host. It opened its mouth in a silent hiss; whiskers whipping the air angrily, and rushed him. The Taker backed off just before the dragon crashed into the sand, sending up a great cloud with a loud thud as the cyborg stumbled. It sent the entire group into a mild panic.

Realization two was this: voiceless but no less fierce.

“Grenade!”  Blue Bird shouted, weapon coming up. Archer notched an arrow and stood protectively before Cyborg as he regained his footing. Realization three: the innocent had a stylized frog tattoo on his arm.

“No!” Cyborg interjected and waited until the others had calmed down enough to listen to him, “It was not a grenade. I felt it—I felt a hand.”

The Taker kept his distance after that, the dragons became more vigilant, and the living more paranoid.

Once, he let them see fragmented bits and hazy pieces of him through the distortion of the heat waves. The spirit lines about his person flared and pulsed in time with his steps, grains of sand wafted up from his body like smoke, his serape hugged his shoulders and draped over his head like a burial shroud. The dragons coiled tighter around their hosts—protective—his colors unnerved them as he knew they would. Bright colors on a dark creature frighten people more than dark colors on an equally dark creature.

He walked along the top of a sand dune; taking long, slow, measured steps. In his dead hand he held Archer’s lost arrow. When the archer’s dark eyes fell on it and narrowed angrily, The Taker gave it a mocking twirl.

_Tag,_

The gesture said.

_You are it._

He couldn’t remember who had taught him these things: how to break a target without touching them, how to itch at the edge of their mind and let their own imagination do the work for him. Sometimes, he wished he could, although, in the end, it didn’t matter. The arrow was transferred to his dominate hand as he stopped walking. Lifting it to his eye, he looked down the length of the shaft, and threw it as if it was a dart. It sailed through the air in a clean arch, a true testament to its craftsmanship, and embedded in the sand between Archer’s feet.

Without taking his eyes off of him, Archer crouched down and picked up his returned arrow by the small spaces between the fletching; steam rose from the spots where The Taker had touched it.

“What is that thing?” Frog Tattoo asked, shifting his weight uneasily. His fingers drummed a beat against his weapon, wary and ready to fight if he had to. The Taker tilted his head.

Blue Bird’s hand rose to her helmet. “I don’t know. It only appears on a heat scan.”

“It’s a spirit of some kind,” Cyborg said, “and it likes to play games.”

“Yeah? What makes ya say that?”

Cyborg looked at Frog Tattoo and patted his shoulder good naturedly. “Otherwise, I very much doubt we would still be alive.” The Taker thought he sounded too cheerful for such a statement.

 

* * *

 

 

He knew the Men in Black wouldn’t be there when he materialized in the small two story house—he could feel them meeting up with other guilty souls somewhere else in his desert—but he hadn’t come here for them.  He kneeled to look under the couch. The pistol was still there.

“ _Wolf Mother, where have you been? You look so warn and so thin. You’re a taker; a death maker, let me here you sing hey ya hey ya.”_  

He could feel the three guilty souls and the innocent close in on the Men in Black. The wave of pain crested and The Taker stood with the pistol in hand.

It would be a shame if the Men in Black happened to miss it.

Perhaps he should return it.

“Hey ya hey ya.”

 

* * *

 

 

Hanzo slid on his knees behind cover; enemy rounds hit the wall and floor, chunks of concrete flying. The golden ribbon in his hair jerked as a bullet nicked it. He grit his teeth in annoyance before he leaned out and shot the Talon agent who’d dared. Pharah’s rockets came raining down on the remaining Talon agents that were outside; one of them hit the door and blew it clean off its hinges. They didn’t wait for the dust to settle.

Hanzo got to his feet smoothly and put another arrow to the bow string as he ran after Lucio. Pharah landed, taking a knee to absorb the momentum, before following. Genji led the way when they moved forward into the large building complex. The inside of the building was too dark after being in the blinding sun for so long but Hanzo didn’t let that slow him. Running blindly forward may have been a foolish thing to do but he had every confidence in Genji’s visor to allow him to take care of any obstacle while the rest of the team adjusted.

When Hanzo’s eyes did finally adjust, bodies littered the long hallway; he looked up just in time to see his younger brother decapitate a Talon agent. Blood splattered against the wall as the head rolled; it was messy but effective.    

The dragons hissed a warning; the vibrations traveled through the muscle and nerves of his arm and down into his bones. Storm Bow came up before the ache in his arm completely dissipated; an arrow flew past Genji and found a new home in a stray agent’s throat.

“Lucio,” Pharah put her back to the wall as she reloaded. “You’re sure you can find the computers?”

“I got this, don’t even worry!” The audio medic said and broke off from the group, skating halfway up the wall when he took the corner too sharply. The rest of the team kept moving forward. Talon agents came and Talon agents died. Hopefully Lucio could finish hacking the base before reinforcements showed up.

 _Or,_ Hanzo thought with some trepidation, _the Sand Spirit._ His dragons shifted beneath his skin just at the mere thought of it. It didn’t take a genius to piece together that it was vindictive; the way it had prowled and trailed them for days, tripping Genji and giving Hanzo his arrow back simply to prove that it _could_ _touch_ _them_.  What was unclear was why it chose to follow them. Was it after one of them—all of them—or was it following because its nature was that of a vulture’s; trailing behind in the hopes of a left over carcass it could pick clean. Hanzo wasn’t sure if the dragons could effectively fight against something like that when they took energy from him to manifest.

He shot down another man. Pharah’s bullets and the rush of battle helped refocus him on the task at hand. To quote that old American idiom: he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

 

* * *

 

 

The massive bank of computers was stored in the basement with large chilling towers whirring loudly as they tried to keep them cooled down. Lucio’s fingers hovered over the main computer’s keyboard; a large technological monster with a wide screen that took up most of the table it was sitting on. He could feel the heat coming off of it from where he was standing. Lucio hesitated to touch it for a moment longer before his fingers were flying across the keyboard. Every file was labeled with numbers and letters with no obvious system of organization.

One of them had been opened less than a month ago while the others hadn’t been touched for a few years. Lucio licked his finger tips to ease the sting of the built up heat and got back to work. The file was nothing but numbers; deposits, withdrawals, inconsequential $2.50 and large $75,000 spendings, and coordinates. Lucio scowled darkly. He knew exactly were that 75k had gone; into the newly resurrected Overwatch’s jet. It replaced old nuts and bolts, bad wires, and resupplied the trauma kit they kept forward on the bulkhead. Talon was tracking his and Hana’s bank accounts.

It made a disturbing amount of sense. Overwatch was illegal, the money had to come from somewhere, and they had been happy to volunteer it. Lucio was looking at a digital copy of everything they bought from small souvenirs to plane tickets since they joined.

“So this is why we could never get the drop on you, is it?” He mumbled to himself. Lucio licked his fingers again and cracked his knuckles. Hacking was easy but writing viruses was fun. It hadn’t always been that way but his revolution in Brazil had forced him to adapt. Lucio didn’t have the time to write something complex or clever, like a mutating template, but he didn’t need to. It only needed to fabricate some expenses here and there to help throw them off while syphoning the numbers and coordinates that Talon was generating.

Turnabout was fair play.

The temperature suddenly seemed to rise. Lucio almost wrote it off as his imagination but then the whirring of the cooling towers grew louder as they worked harder. His fingers paused on the keyboard. The very air stilled as he strained his ears for a sound—any at all—but there was nothing: only the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears and his heart jumping in his chest like a flea on a dog.

He was hyper aware of the sweat beaded on his neck that trailed down the vein and into the hollow of his throat, of the clothes sticking to his back. Turning around reveled what his ears had already known: there was nobody in the room with him. Yet something inside him insisted that there was—something primal that knew things his other five senses did not. It screamed a warning; loud and red, that whatever was in the room with him, was dangerous and was to be feared. The stinging heat in his fingertips pulled him from that train of thought. With a hiss, he yanked them away and stuck them in his mouth.

“Keep it together.” Lucio shook his head at himself, finishing the virus with a few precise keystrokes, and launched it into Talon’s systems. The walls and ceiling of the room shook with the shocks of something exploding, loose pieces of dirt and concrete fell from the ceiling and bounced off the computers with a tiny ‘ _tink_ ’ before settling onto the floor. Lucio took it as his cue to leave.

He ran.  The lights in the corridors flickered and cast everything in a sickly yellow.  Lucio turned sharply, busted down a door, and almost ran headlong into a stray Talon squad. None of them had time to react as Lucio went up and around them; leaving only a green afterimage on the wall. Shouts of surprise and hurried footsteps followed him.

Bullets flew and imbedded in the walls when they took wild shots. Some came close enough that Lucio felt the displaced air. One bullet nicked his side, under the ribcage, but the adrenaline prevented him from feeling it. Lucio fired over his shoulder without looking to take aim: a controlled burst of four sonic shots that glowed green and resonated with a low ‘whub whub.’  He didn’t look back to see if he had hit any of them or not. Getting out was his priority.

The Talon squad kept pace with him, even when he took random turns in an attempt to throw them off. Lucio half twisted to shoot another controlled burst when The Taker grabbed his arm and hauled him around a sharp corner before turning into sand and dust. The gunfire stopped and a moment later something dropped from the ceiling and hit the floor with a sickening sound. The boy cautiously peeked around the corner. The Taker was standing over five bodies, unrecognizable as human. Four of them were obviously dead; their skin ashen gray. One had their tongue lolling out of their mouth, which was open wider than should have been possible, even with a dislocated jaw.

But the fifth was still dying. Half of his face had been blasted off with The Taker’s sand, shredded down to the bone; his eye looked too large for his head now that he no longer had eyelids.

Frog Tattoo gagged, “Holy shit,” he swallowed hard and lifted a trembling hand to his ear, “Sandman’s back. No, yeah, I’m fine he’s just…” In the time it took the light to flicker, The Taker had moved to stand on the wall. “…chillin’?”

He watched Frog Tattoo rub his arm where The Taker had touched him, checking for injury as an afterthought. There were none. Only The Taker’s dead hand burned. The boy nodded before he remembered whoever he was talking to couldn’t see him and he said, “On my way.”

The Taker followed him.

 

* * *

 

 

The boy found his friends hunkered down in an out-of-the-way room, out of sight, and listening for approaching hostiles. Cyborg and Archer were guarding the door while Blue Bird was reloading. Frog Tattoo slid through the doorway and sat beside her; taking deep breathes to help regain a semblance of a normal rhythm.

“Where is the spirit?” Archer asked, voice tight, scanning the hall once more before looking at Frog Tattoo. The boy wiped the sweat from his eyes and shrugged.

“I dunno. He disappeared after a while. Dude was following me and then he wasn’t.” He let his head fall back against the wall, grabbed the front of his shirt and fanned himself. “Is it hot in here or is that me?”

It was hot and it was not him.

It was The Taker.

He manifested a few steps away from Frog Tattoo. A fool would have called the stance almost protective. There was a single second of surprised stillness—eyes wide, jaws dropped, breath stuttering still in aching lungs— before the room erupted in bright green and blue light.

The Taker had never been attacked by another spirit before.

The dragons roared as they crossed into the corporeal plain without being summoned. The very air quivered around them and the light they gave off was so bright and so sudden that The Taker was certain he had just witnessed three stars going supernova. They rushed at The Taker, their whiskers and tails lashing at the air like angry vipers. The green one spearheaded the charge as the two blue dragons danced and coiled around it: a deadly corkscrew.

The Taker planted his feet shoulder width apart and dug his heels into the floor: an immovable veteran of pain. It did not help. The dragons moved fast enough that The Taker didn’t have time to notice that the hair on the nape of his neck abruptly stood on end or that the air suddenly smelled of ozone.  They light him up like a livewire; electricity coursed through his body, muscles spasm uncontrollably, and something in his ear popped.

Spirit melded into spirit, time slowed into the grinding halt of a millisecond, and they could feel each other as they felt themselves. The Taker: a death maker, a terrible, angry thing that cared more for the punishment over the crime. The dragons: celestial, protective, proud, loyal, fierce with the power of a thousand hurricanes.

They meant to kill him.

The Taker threw his arms out to either side and challenged them to try. A dead thing couldn’t die twice. He sneered and called them, “Servants.”

Lightning

         stri

kes.

Their rage was a tangible force that beat against him. He gasped when they redoubled their efforts to tear him apart. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to breathe but the primal lizard brain was screaming and kicking and panicking that he couldn’t breathe, _he couldn’t breathe!_

It lasted for an eternity, for the time it took a forest to come into existence, for the time it took to blink, for the time it took to exhale. The dragons’ tails passed through him and the pain mercifully stopped. When he came back to himself, The Taker found himself kneeling. His knee guard was firmly planted, his dead arm supporting his weight as he leaned forward, and his other arm had been curled into his chest protectively. He blinked once, twice, inhaled a shaky breath, and tossed his head like a bull with a disgruntled growl. The thick braid of his hair was a comforting weight against his shoulder.

Sand wafted off his shoulders like smoke, eddying towards the ceiling. The soft hissing of the sand grains sounded too loud to his ears. He felt shaken, something he had grown unaccustomed to feeling. When he lifted his head, the living were watching him.

Frog Tattoo had jumped away from the dragons and now stood behind Blue Bird. Cyborg and Archer were slumped against the door frame, panting. Archer looked a few shades paler with a light sheen of sweat on his brow, neck, and chest while steam was being released from Cyborg’s shoulders in great geyser-like jets. The dragons where still there, wrapped around their hosts’ shoulders, and glaring at The Taker; too exhausted to move. Their whiskers swayed in an unseen wind.

Blue Bird had frozen. Slowly, with jerky movements as if she could only comprehend small bursts of motion at a time, she removed her helmet. The Taker watched her. Now that he was close enough to see without the heatwaves to obscure him, everything stood out in sharp, painful edges. Blue Bird’s eyes were locked on the geometric diamond motif of his serape.

Something behind her eyes snapped and clicked into place and her face did something complicated that The Taker couldn’t name. Her breath hitched and then her eyes were sweeping around his person, taking in everything—the bull mask, the skull imbedded into his dead arm, the chest armor, the waist long braid he wore his hair in, pausing on his belt buckle for several heavy moments, before looking back at his face.

Blue Bird’s helmet slipped through her fingers and hit the floor with the harsh thud of metal on concrete.

“McCree?” She asked hesitantly, testing it in her mouth before letting it roll off her tongue; a beloved thing that was almost forgotten but now suddenly remembered, and took a single step forward. “Jesse McCree?” dark brown, nearly black, eyes stared past his mask and into ghost blue depths unflinchingly.

_A child; dark innocent eyes that turn gold under the right light,_

_dark hair,_

_flashes of golden beads,_

_a wide smile._

_Candles: 13 of them._

_“Reach for the sky!”_

_A garden hose is aimed at his face._

_“Do you have any eights?”_

_Go fish._

_“My star’s moving.”_

_A satellite._

_They’re lying on the ground with thousands of stars above them._

_No light pollution._

_Singing crickets and_

_the smell of wet grass is oddly_

_soothing._

_“Mom said you’re in here because you were being stupid again.”_

_They’re sitting on a bed in a sterile room._

_He’s covered in_

_cuts_

_and bruises,_

_his leg is in a cast._

Her name hit him in the soft spot between the eyes: Fareeha. His heart jolted painfully in his chest as it beat just once. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. Fareeha was a woman now. Dark eyes; no longer innocent, dark hair, flashes of golden beads, a new tattoo.  The Taker shot to his feet, stumbling once when he took a lurching step forward. Distantly, he registered that the others were watching them.

Tentatively, Fareeha came forward. She hesitated for one long moment and then, with surprisingly steady fingers, reached out to touch his mask, to convince herself of his corporeality. He let her. Fareeha’s fingers curled around the edge of the bull mask and slowly lifted up.

He knew what she saw. He’d seen it himself in Peacekeeper’s barrel: a face of dry ashen skin, dirty with sand dust, dark sleepless circles under pale blue and glassy-dead eyes, jaw bone and molars visible through torn flesh and ligaments.

It wasn’t easy to look past his damaged face but Fareeha managed it. Her dark eyes growing wet and wide when they focused on his eyes—eyes that had been a warm brown when he was alive; that much he did remember. But now they were the same blue as the spirit lines. They held little humanity and enough dry fire that no one knew what he was; only what he was not. The mask was pushed further and further back until it, and the cowl, fell off his head. The mask hit the ground as grains of sand.

“Jesse.” Fareeha said, voice breaking on a sob as she threw herself at him; arms wrapping around his torso and squeezed tight.  He could feel her grab her own elbows to lock him in. Something wet dropped onto his neck when Fareeha buried her face there. It took him a painful second to realize she was crying. Behind Fareeha, Cyborg had a fist full of Archer’s sleeve in a death grip.  

There was a low pressure in The Taker’s head, at the base of his skull; buzzing, growing. Fareeha held him tighter and this…this he knew. It was coming back: what it felt like to be missed and therefore loved. When he was alive, people did this a lot.

When he was alive

_A warm hand is on his shoulder, muscles aching from a hard training session. Hands and knuckles wrapped with athletic tape and gauze._

_There is a man he calls ‘Boss’_

_but actually means ‘Dad’_

_A woman with Fareeha’s face—_

_—Fareeha has the woman’s face._

_“Tea?”_

_Herbal._

_“It’s good for you, better than coffee.”_

_Fareeha with a red bandanna tied around her neck._

_It’s not hers._

_It’s his._

_A woman with golden hair, blue eyes, a delicate face_

_Snowcapped mountains green valley beautiful lake_

_Switzerland._

_A giant of a man: strong arms, gentle hands,_

_loud voice._

_Fareeha in a hallway; standing at her approximation of attention._

_His bandanna is around her_

_throat._

_Narrow shoulders squared and chin high_

_A mischievous glint in her eye while_

_He has a can of_

_ground_

_Aleppo pepper._

_No one’s coffee_

_is_

_safe._

_They get caught._

_They laugh._

_He says_

_“Worth it.”_

_She says_

_“I love you.”                                       like it is the last thing she will get to tell him          as they are frog marched to the track and told to run until they collapse._

_Boss calls him_

_‘mijo.’ and ‘idiota.’ and ruffles his hair._

The Taker _screeched_ and pushed Fareeha away and grabbed his head, curling in on himself as he stumbled back a few steps. Blue flames burst to life along his body as his screaming turned into pained, mournful, howls.

_Boss steals his cheap cigarettes every time he gets caught and gives him a look._

_The feeling of his arm going dead._

_Fareeha falling asleep leaning against him._

_Coming back from something,_

_“And we’re still alive!” both hands held up in the air._

_On his 21 st birthday_

_Boss buys him Cuban cigars_

_and_

_gives him a handmade crimson serape with a geometric diamond motif done in golden thread._

_He trades his bandanna out for the serape._

_Fareeha wears the faded bandanna when he’s not there._

_She never told him_

_He knew anyway_

_He is a member of Blackwatch._

_He is a black ops agent,_

_a good shot,_

_a quick draw,_

_a_

_cowboy,_

_punk,_

_kid_

_friend_

_brother_

_mijo_

_He is…_

Jesse McCree lifted his head.

 

* * *

 

 

Existing was an embodied state. He might have been Akvan as he tore through Talon agents without regard for how painfully they screamed. He moved in unpredictable patterns; charging straight before skidding to a stop, only to serpentine, circling around the edge of the fight and coming back in again. An un-intelligent thing that moved on instinct: a body without a brain, only a nervous system. He might have been Mahisha-Asura and it might take a hundred years to kill him.

He could have been Pazuzu, an evil spirit that brought droughts and famine, yet drove other evil spirits away and protected humans from the plagues of the world. He might have been Seth, a god of this desert—the world’s deserts—bringing only chaos and storms trailing after him like a bridal train. He could have been Shaitan— _Satan_ —the Devil: draped in red and burning with blue fire. He could have been Djinn, both good and evil, clipping the talons of a great destructive black bird with every shot he took while protecting two dragons, a frog, and a bird of blue plumage. He might have been Azazel, fighting to uphold his own version of justice.

Once upon a time, he might have been all of these things all at once.

But he was none of these things because he was himself.

McCree hadn’t existed in any form save memory for a long time and now, he circled around as a dust devil, taking bullets meant for someone else, and returning fire with the stolen pistol. The Talon agents that got to close to him were dealt with, with a set of boned claws opening them up as easy as a zipper. Their intestines spilling onto the hot sand reminded him of still born animals: greyish-white with skin thin enough to see the veins underneath. Archer used him as a spring board and climbed on top of a radio tower that glinted like a monster’s tooth in the sun.

McCree squeezed the trigger twelve times on twelve exhales and twelve agents died. The thirteenth man got unlucky. McCree called the sand and flung a storm at him; clothes and tactical gear got ripped off, flesh was shredded and then peeled away from the bone it was anchored to. He died screaming around a throat full of sand.

The Talon agents were trying to employ the time honored ‘divide and conquer’ with little success. When someone was cut off, McCree called the sand into columns—in Archer’s case: a flying buttress that he slid down— walls and bridges into an escape route for them while McCree provided cover fire. At Peacekeeper’s powerful crack, he watched Fareeha smile beneath her helmet.

Slowly, McCree managed to nudge and herd Fareeha and her ragtag group away from the Talon base and out into the desert. They struggled against the sand under their feet as they ran up a dune. When they reached the top, McCree shoved them down the other side. Grains of sand got flung into the air as they rolled and tumbled to the bottom.

“Jesse!” Fareeha shouted up at him. He wasn’t sure how she managed to include a reprimand and a protest against being shoved into that one word but she did. He smiled. The four of them were covered in dirt and dust. McCree lifted his hand to where the brim of his hat would’ve been and then let his arm drop. As his hand passed over his face, small grains of sand drifted from his fingers and solidified into the bull mask.

He turned away and headed back towards the base to deal with whoever still lived.

 

* * *

 

 

Two days later The Taker was sitting on a rocky outcropping when his perspective split. Through one eye he could see the desert and all her biomes stretch out before him: a sprawling land of sand dunes, some big and some small. Cacti and stubborn shrubs, compact earth made of dust, rocks, and pebbles more than it was of sand. A gorge in the distance that was distorted by heatwaves and mirage lines. Through the other eye he could see grains of sand shifting to accommodate a slender body: a lizard was looking at his skull, contemplating on using an eye socket to hide in.

He reached out to touch it—to coax it—to let it know that it was welcome to it. When was the last time he had touched an animal simply for the pleasure of it? When was the last time he had done something so normal? McCree could remember exactly what those scales felt like.

His hand met only empty air. He reached for it once, twice, thrice, before he realized that it wasn’t actually in front of him; that it was miles away from him. Growling in frustrated embarrassment, McCree punched the ground by his leg.

The heat from the golden-red sand was soothing and he grabbed fistfuls of it to anchor himself. He chewed on his lip. The dry and cracked skin broke and fell into his lap as nothing more than sand particles. The feeling of needing something in his mouth—between his teeth—something he could bite and chew on, itched at him. He looked down at his lap. Realization four: his left leg, the one with the knee guard, was skeletal. A large portion of his pant leg had been torn away, the loose threads were frayed. When had that happened?

McCree had read something, somewhere once, in a forgotten book penned by a forgotten author that _“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.”_

The Taker wished that wasn’t true—that the soul could forget. But it couldn’t and with McCree awake, all of those memories—the good and bad and happy and sad and wistful and magical and miserable and sunny and rainy and mundane and exciting—were finding their way out of the dusty dark corners of his mind and into the light again.

They were incomplete.

It didn’t matter.

_It did._

They wouldn’t change anything.

                _They would change everything._

Memories were for the living. The dead had no need of them.

It was an internal battle that waged within himself, between The Taker and Jesse McCree. Should he go back? If McCree loved Fareeha as a sister, how did he feel about the others? Would they welcome him? Would they reject him? Would they fear or love him? Questions whose answers wouldn’t matter, not to The Taker, but they meant the world to McCree.

There would always be some battles you couldn’t fight.

McCree pushed himself to his feet.

 

* * *

 

 

It was a condemned rundown hotel building that had been abandoned, reclaimed by the city and never dealt with. It had three floors with ten rooms spaced widely apart to offer the privacy that the thin walls couldn’t. The plaster on the walls had turned yellow with age. Large portions of it had cracked, peeled, and fallen away to reveal the rotting wood and support beams underneath. The floorboards didn’t creak and there was no dust for his steps to kick up. The building was devoid of life—even the life that should have been there: spiders, rats, desert weeds.

The building may have been lifeless but room 305 wasn’t.

The dragons turned to him as soon as he appeared. The lights flickered. With each flare, he changed abruptly, from a man

to vengeful spirit

                and back again.

Then the lights winked out for several seconds, leaving them all in the darkness. When they returned—no longer shivering but strong and reliable—he had settled into the form he wore when he was alive. McCree stood in the center of the room: hair glowing with a healthy shine and much shorter yet still long for a man, brown eyes, gentle crow’s feet and a bearded face that carried lines that suggested he smiled and laughed a lot.

Archer and Cyborg were already watching him but it took a few seconds for Fareeha and Frog Tattoo to finish scanning the room and pin him with their stares. Cyborg’s faceplate had been taken off and the face beneath was almost as ruined as The Taker’s. He had long ugly scars, deep and uneven with missing muscle mass, that traveled from jaw to hairline. His eyes were brown and his hair was green.

_White sand—snow_

_Mountain trees pine_

_Cold._

_His fingers are numb._

_‘I’m not built for this.’ He thinks and starts jumping in place._

_Siberia_

_can_

_suck_

_it._

_His teammate stands beside him, dressed in clothes chosen for_

_range of movement over_

_warmth._

_His new body protects him from the worst of it._

_McCree licks his lips and begins whistling._

_“How do you do that?”_

_His whistle turns into a question mark.                He glances over to see brown eyes studying the way his mouth is shaped._

_“I’ll teach you.”_

_Blackwatch’s newbie learns to whistle in Siberia._

_He’s in the middle of ‘Long Black Train’ when he sneezes._

_The dry air gives him a                   bloody nose._

The man’s name came far gentler than Fareeha’s and yet it still hurt: Genji

The Taker shuffled uneasily. It was never in his nature to be interested in the living. McCree clutched at his chest and willed himself to stay solid. Half of his face turned into sand and back into tan skin before he felt in control again.

_It is called FMK._

_They play it at random times._

_Missions, the med bay, during sparing matches, at communal dinner,_

_sometimes at breakfast._

_They watch terrible movies when the job gets bad._

_Nightmares are not_

_limited to_

_the veterans._

_“Here, give this a try.” He says._

_They’re on a beach,_

_the mission had been long and physically taxing and they’re both covered_

_in cuts_

_and bruises and small burns._

_Minor injuries that collectively hurt and throb._

_He offers Genji a clear bottle with clear liquid._

_There is a dead worm at the bottom.      Genji coughs.                McCree laughs._

_Genji gives him a bowl of_

_mint ice cream—_

_Wasabi._

_Pay back for the tequila._

_“Do you have any siblings?” Genji asks one day._

_“Nah.” McCree says. “It’s just me.”_

_“I have an older brother. His name is Hanzo.”_

_Imisshim            Goes unsaid._

_Whathappenedtohim        Goes unasked._

Whatever happened must not matter anymore, McCree thought, because Hanzo the archer was sitting on the bed beside Genji; their shoulders touching. Fareeha and Frog Tattoo were sharing the other bed that sat parallel to theirs. Room 305 was spotless; the walls had been repaired and painted in shades of muted yellows and warm browns. The bedding was bleach clean and smelled of lavender. The rich carpet had been vacuumed recently by someone looking to work off anxious energy. The uneven crisscrossing of where the carpet had been rubbed the wrong way like a cat stood testament to that.

For all intense and purposes the room looked like any other respectable hotel room except for two things: the windows had been painted over with matte black and, somewhere in the world, there was an armory missing its door. McCree raised an eyebrow at that.

_Safe house safe place house safe house that is safe._

“Jesse?” McCree’s head snapped away from the door and to Genji in the time it took for a hummingbird to flap its wings. Genji…who looked like he was about to cry: face pinched in sorrow and regret. Those brown eyes sweeping along the thing his best friend had become. Belatedly, McCree finally noticed the bowls of stew in their hands; steam wafted off the tops lazily.

A communal dinner: made more important and personal, akin to sharing a secret, simply for the fact that there were only four people to share it with. Genji suddenly tensed as his dragon uncoiled from around his shoulders, long body undulating as it untangled itself and moved towards McCree. It shrank until it was about the size of a black-footed ferret and glowed brighter and brighter until it gently tore the veil separating the corporeal plain from theirs and crossed over.

Everyone in the room froze and held their breath as the dragon floated up until it was eye-level with McCree. It blinked and there was no recognition in its eyes like there had been in Fareeha’s and Genji’s and why should there be? McCree suffered a great deal before his death and that changed him, took something away from him—something so vital to the very essence of his being that he could no longer remain as he was. It turned him into the type of spirit that the living feared to become; dwelling in a season without flux, in a time without flow.

Genji’s dragon might have been fond of McCree when he had been alive but this thing that he had become was foreign and dangerous and unpredictable and the dragon did not like it. But for Genji, it would tolerate him. When the dragon was done staring him down, it left this plain of existence in favor of the one it belonged to and returned to Genji‘s shoulders.

There was a heavy moment of silence before Frog Tattoo cleared his throat, “It’s good to see you again, man.” He said, nerves making his voice a little too loud. But he didn’t let that stop him. “I’m Lucio. I’ve heard a lot about you. Uh…thanks for helping us out with Talon back there, would’ve been screwed if you hadn’t come along.”

McCree smiled at him and tipped an invisible hat. It was not a nice smile to look at: sharp edges and glistening teeth and cruel shadows—macabre—the inverse of what his smile used to be. Lucio swallowed thickly. Genji fidgeted; metal fingers caressing the side of his bowl, the muscles in his jaw flexing and rippling. He looked like he was trying to work up the nerve to say something before backing out, only to try again. Fareeha wasn’t much better yet neither one spoke up.

McCree remained silent and no one said anything for a time. He could imagine that conversing with the dead was always difficult for the living. When the silence was finally broken—when the question finally came, it came from a reluctant source. Hanzo sighed deeply, set his bowl aside, than faced McCree. His voice sounded like it had been lassoed, hog-tied, and drug up his throat kicking and screaming.

He asked only one thing: “How?”

Which was, somehow, much worse than ‘why’ because that, at least, was an accusation and it would’ve been easier if they were angry with him. Anger he knew and understood; it was something he could deal with. The simplistic way of accepting ‘how’ without judgment or blame wasn’t something he remembered how to do.

McCree had fallen out of the habit of talking— wasn’t sure if he could anymore. He licked his lips and swallowed, then opened his mouth to try but stopped. Sometimes words couldn’t explain reality. A ladder to Heaven may be fathomable but not creatable because ‘Heaven’ was not a thing that could be touched and smelled—it was an idea, a place people _believed_ existed. All there was, was the word and it was a hollow thing. Even if McCree had the words, they would be his ladder to Heaven and the living wouldn’t understand.

He turned on his heel, serape flaring, and stalked towards the door. McCree made a point to let his feet stomp harder than The Taker’s near weightless tread. It felt good to pretend that he was made of flesh and bone and muscle: that he was anchored down instead of free floating. It felt good to hear his spurs jingle with each step.

The living scrambled to follow him.

He took them off the frayed edges and into the city; through the more unpopulated side streets despite the late hour. The street lamps flickered when he passed to close to them. A cat hissed, back arched and fur on end, before it runs away from him. Most of the alleys they pass smell of rotten food, old vomit, and piss. But he registered none of it, completely focused inward, on the feeling of a boot being ruthlessly ground into his back.

“ _Wolf mother, where have you been?”_

He followed it to the other end of the city, to the outskirts of a train yard filled with sleeping iron giants, over the railroads, and into an old graveyard directly across the next street. McCree tensed as the pain spiked and twisted and grew to levels he’d never felt before. The sound of snakes hissing filled the night air. He walked on, his steps growing lighter as The Taker emerged. The newer headstones were well cared for. Those made of black granite still gleamed with the moon while the white granite seemed to glow. But the older ones further back were crumbling and overgrown.

_“You look so worn and so thin.”_

Coyotes howled and yipped, high and harsh on the ears. The temperature rose and evaporated the sparse dew that had clung to the blades of brown grass: blanketing their legs in a thin layer of fog. Still he walked deeper into the cemetery and the living followed him, wary and uncertain but determined to see what he intends to show them.

It was here that McCree made them understand.

The old man was kneeling next to a headstone that marked where one of his ancestors lied. His skin was sun kissed, wrinkled and thin with age spots on his gnarled hands. The whites of his eyes had long since turned yellow. His shoulders carried a permanent hunch.

“ _Let me hear you sing hey ya hey ya.”_

The Taker burst forth in a flare of blue flames, hissing snakes, and howling coyotes. His mask was suddenly back in its proper place and his serape flared and fluttered around his shoulders: the conductor for the symphony from Hell. His drug his spurs against the ground and took a sick kind of pleasure as he watched the old man start to tremble at the soft sound of clinking metal. Some people raged at the end of their life, rebelled and fought against the darkness of death, some people accepted it and found peace in their last moments, and some feared it.

The old man shrunk away, pressing his back against the nearest headstone, when The Taker stepped forward. He didn’t scream nor did he beg because he saw his fate standing before him, and knew that it was the price he now had to pay. The Taker could see him as he was in his youth: wild and untamed, killing for the thrill and the sport. In his twilight years he wrestled with the horror and the guilt of the brutality. When he turned to face The Taker, there was dread and terror but also a quiet relief, an acceptance.

The Taker drew Peacekeeper. The old man had punished himself enough throughout his life, and it was now time for mercy. The dead were not without compassion. In the milliseconds it took for the bullet passed through his head, the dragons—and their hosts by extension— could see what The Taker had seen. The old man’s corpse slumped to the ground, where The Taker left him, knowing that someone would find him and give him a burial then. The faceplate made it impossible to see Genji’s face but Hanzo’s was full of a quiet hardness and pity. He stared at The Taker and McCree understood that Hanzo was sorry that he couldn’t walk away from this. That he was sorry McCree couldn’t find his own peace.

The Taker nodded and turned away and vanished.

 

* * *

 

 

He watched Fareeha, Genji, Hanzo, and Lucio pile into the transport jet that had been sent for them. There was a woman with spiked brown hair sitting in the piolet’s seat. His eyes slid over each person as they climbed aboard but they stayed locked on Lucio the longest. The first innocent The Taker had ever saved—had ever _tried_ to save.

He thought of The Owl, the reaper of souls, and of The Soldier, the guardian of the innocent, and of all the people they saved when they finished a hunt. He thought of McCree, the mercenary who took any paying job as long as it aligned with his own strong moral code. He thought about the other nothing-mores that he didn’t know about but was certain must exist somewhere in the world.

He shouldn’t feel sorrow for them, for if they do exist, then they chose on their own to take the same path that he walked. But he does. He was beginning to understand that there were better things than revenge. He watched as the jet ascended and flew away. They had their entire lives before them and he did not.

The sky was painfully blue. 

He let the sand take him back to that terrible place, where the Men in Black lie dead. The complex looked mostly the same, save for a few holes in the walls and the bloating bodies outside. He does for them what he did for the woman in the river bed, even though they do not deserve it. The sand swallows the bodies until there was nothing left but the vaguest of impressions of where they used to be.

There were no souls to save here.

He was The Taker just as he used to be Jesse McCree.

**Author's Note:**

> The woman in the beginning was basically Kissing Kate Barlow from Holes.
> 
> When the dragons arn't being noodles or in battle and being magjestic, I imagine them being about this size. http://lintufriikki.tumblr.com/post/152971105863/dragon-tamer 
> 
> Used a quote from Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
> 
> Was inspired by:
> 
> Rin Chupeco, The Girl from the Well
> 
> XDax the Magic DragonX
> 
> Ghost Rider


End file.
